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Quendeadinfladnarstrapin
Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was the birth name of a middle-aged male Dwarf living in the Dwarf fortress of Stonekeep during the New Age. Sit back, grab a favorite beverage, and learn of one of the most insignificant players in all of Dwarf history. Early Childhood Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was born in Stonekeep in the 3650's of the unctual calendar. His mother was pregnant for ten months, compaining frequently that her unborn child made her feel woozy and weak. He was eventually born into the Klak clan, a family of little renown or historical importance. He came into the world in the usual way, a classic breech birth, with a blonde baby beard that would eventually be naturally and gradually replaced with a darker one as he aged. He had weighed fourteen pounds, but his low birth weight did in no way affect his health as a newborn. He had one green eye and one brown one, a hereditary family trait that had no negative effects on his vision. He was predisposed towards left-handedness, but due to its negative connotation in Dwarf society, he professed to be ambidextrous. Truth be told, he usually had an excuse at the ready as to why he never used his right hand for anything (he often cited an old sports injury, despite the fact that he had never participated in any organized sports programs in his entire life). The son of a pair of hard-working Dwarf parents, his mother was a gem inspector and his father was a repairsmith by trade. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin had no interest in such things; while he fancied the lustre of gems, he lacked the requisite knowledge and skill to detect microscopic flaws in their facets, meaning he would have fared poorly had he taken this as a profession. Likewise, he was unskilled at repairing things; the few times he'd tried, his efforts frequently resulted in the object in question being in considerably worse shape than before he'd started. He had no living siblings, though his mother miscarried eleven times prior to his birth. As a youth, he was fond of digging in the dirt, making his maternal grandfather quite proud (he had worked as a prospector for nearly 200 years), though his tendency to eat the dirt afterwards made his family somewhat less proud. Like many Dwarves, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was extremely fond of pickled foods, counting pickled wyvern meat and pickled pineapple among his favorites. The sour vinegar taste agreed with his Dwarf palate; he was repulsed by foods that were not marinated in this manner. His favorite color was a greenish-brown, which was, not coincidentally, the color of the vinegar usually left at the bottom of a barrel of pickled wyvern. The young Dwarf developed a healthy habit early on of eating nearly non-stop, a typical Dwarf trait that would serve him well; there was rarely time to sit down and dedicate one's complete attention to the routine task of merely eating and doing nothing else. A habit of continuous snacking was simply efficient. Along the same lines, he rarely followed a routine sleep schedule; he frequently remained awake to the point of exhaustion, which often took three or four days, after which he would collapse and fall into a deep slumber for many hours. He was impossible to wake during his sleep state; he once slept through an earthquake that, upon awakening, he was convinced never really happened. He often dreamed of pink unicorns, though he did not dwell upon the symbolism or give any deep and meaningful consideration to its meaning. Adolescence Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was given the opportunity to attend standard Dwarf schooling, but instead, his parents opted to enroll him in a specialized elite academy for Dwarf youths, giving particular attention to the metallurgy and gemstone facet-cutting trades. It was their hope that he would follow in the steps of his esteemed grandparents, all four of which had worked in metalsmithing and gem-cutting in some capacity. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was too well-spoken to ever speak out against his parents; regardless of his personal interests, he did as they asked him to. He dutifully endured all twenty years of the academy, despite a general lack of interest in the course material. He frequently slipped away to use the lavatory, desperate for a change in venue, for the classroom was dark and dismal and he found education using books and chalkboards eminently less useful than hands-on learning. He ultimately graduated with a barely-passing grade. The only reason he had not failed completely was because the course instructor had taken a decidedly prurient interest in him. He remained completely aware of this fact, despite the way she had constantly pranced around the classroom, waving her breasts and buttocks directly in his face. It wasn't that he failed to pay attention or that he wouldn't have accepted a more direct proposal; he merely took things at face value, and he simply believed she didn't own any clothing that adequately covered her supple body. The course instructor in question later went on to enjoy a long and profitable career as a second-rate star of several racy "Dwerrows Gone Wild" live stage performances. Young Quendeadinfladnarstrapin adopted the values of his parents, and his attitude towards other races largely mirrored theirs; he grew up with a strong but unfounded hatred towards Elves, creatures whom he believed to lead a frivolous, pointless existence. He failed to understand their love of art and music, since he believed that success only came through hard work, dedication, and utter misery. Indeed, his childhood home had sported a plaque above their hearth that displayed precisely this quotation from ancient Dwarven philosophers. He would not always feel this way, but it would take a nearly-insurmountable tragedy in order to compel him to change his point of view. Adult Life His first job was as a maintenance worker on the mine scaffording, the wooden structures that had been built inside the hollowed-out Stonekeep mountain that allowed Dwarves to mine ore and gem deposits. He found the work boring and fruitless, as the scaffording was generally in very fine repair, and required minimal upkeep. However, he took some pride in having adopted his first paying job, so he performed the work with care and due diligence. He spent the long work hours humming Dwarf battle hymns to himself, inventing hundreds of new stanzas and tacking them on to the existing, traditional lyrics. It was during this time that he had memorized countless songs that he would be able to readily recall later, well after he'd left the job in question. Years after the fact, he would sometimes spontaneously launch into a recitation of "Whistle While You Ache" and manage to get every word and every note spot-on. He was briefly involved in a political campaign to overthrow Gerrick of Gonderick, whom some Dwarves felt was too overbearing and self-serving to act as the clan leader. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was the cousin of the Dwarf who sought Gerrick's upheaval, and because of this, he felt a degree of loyalty to his cousin and these aspirations to depose Gerrick. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin had rallied to gather together as many protesters and would-be naysayers for a formal protest. He was ultimately coerced into assisting his cousin, only to find that the campaign to remove Gerrick largely involved sharp swords. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin found such a prospect unsettling, to say the least; he regarded nearly all his fellow Dwarves as brothers, and disliked the notion of killing another merely to further some political ideals. The campaign against Gerrick largely fizzled out on its own, but Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was so soured by the notion of political backstabbing that he refused to vote in any election for the rest of his life. He had come to associate politics with feelings of betrayal and shame, and these had no place in his life if he could help it. During his adolescence, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin attempted to woo and marry a young Dwarf debutante named Klartran, who had a lush black mane and beard, a stout, compact little body, and luxuriantly bushy eyebrows. She was a goddess. Truly the dworrow of his dreams, he ended up pursuing her for almost 40 years. He did everything he could think of to garner her attention. He left her hastily-scrawled love notes on her doorstep; he often sent her anonymous deliveries of pickled snake heads. If she knew who her secret admirer was, however, she never said anything to him directly. Eventually, she was killed in a tragic excavator-machine accident. The cause of the accident was regrettably never firmly established, though poor maintenance upkeep and lack of mechanical training for the excavator operators were both likely culprits. It was a loss that would haunt him for many years. He continued to visit her grave for decades following her death, stopping only when another malfunctioning excavator-machine uprooted the burial site and destroyed it beyond recognition. Heartbroken and disenfranchised, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin left the safety of Stonekeep and spent almost a century living as a hermit in the Swordedge Mountains. During his time in isolation, he taught himself the art of woodcarving. The subject matter of many of his carvings were battle implements from early Dwarf lore, such as wheeled battering rams, trebuchets, and siege towers. His creations were nearly-perfect, miniaturized replicas of the real-life devices, and were made of separate parts held together with dowels, and as such the miniature representations frequently enjoyed complete functionality. He later took up taxidermy; while it was a pasttime he greatly enjoyed, and was quite skilled at it, he never quite got the hang of realistic glass eyeballs. More often than not, he would find a robin's egg and draw the pupils by hand with a stick of charcoal. He envisioned himself eventually returning home and selling his taxidermist creations for a tidy profit, but one evening when he was out fishing, a pack of hungry bandit-bears snuck into his camp and devoured nearly all his creations, fur and all. Eventually, he contracted a cornea infection that rendered him nearly blind, perhaps as a result of his careless handling of raw animal innards. Sightless and virtually helpless, and lacking the knowledge or skill to administer a treatment himself, his condition forced him to crawl back to Stonekeep to seek medical attention. This journey took him nearly a month, as he was only able to successfully locate the entrance to Stonekeep after circling the entire mountain seventeen times before locating the iridium-plated doors with his fingertips. At first, he was dismissed as a crazy wanderer until a medical examiner was able to authenticate his heritage (Dwarves from other visiting strongholds were almost universally shunned). After the proper medicine was at long last administered, he made a near-full recovery after eighteen weeks. With many of his former friends and acquaintances having been killed during a fierce battle against the Elves of the Elvenwood, he found that he was inadvertantly given a fresh start. He would no longer be judged by friends and family who had known him since he was a youth. He decided to join the Dwarf army, partly to seek vengeance for the loss of his comrades and blood relatives, but also to finally give him a sense of purpose. Ironically, following his time in the army, he emerged more lost and confused than ever before. Army Service Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was accepted into the Dwarf army and assigned the rank of second private. He was outfitted in standard foot soldier attire: plate mail, steel-toed boots, and a battle helmet with headbutting moo moo horns. The armor was a tight fit around the belly, but loose in the shoulders; he found himself constantly adjusting the shoulder pads. During his tenure, he was hard-working and loyal, obeying commands without question and hoping to rise through the ranks as a reward for his service. He eventually climbed the ranks through attrition, as other Dwarves all around him either gave up their posts or just keeled over dead, and not always in that precise order. He was eventually promoted to the rank of lieutenant sub-commander, a role that afforded him some degree of prestige and clout. He felt as if his new role was influential enough to effect the changes he wanted to see, but not quite so high up on the pecking order that it was his head that would roll if things went badly. He was nearly given an esteemed position on board the Giant until a routine check of his medical records turned up his previous vision problems, which prevented him from being given a post on board the war machine. Despite this missed opportunity, he found that the rigid military structure freed him from having to make any decisions about the course of his life, a facet he welcomed and even enjoyed. He received numerous awards for bravery and obedience, including the coveted "Good Job" pin, displaying them proudly on his armored breast plate. He found, for the most part, that the days were long and often blended together in his mind. Entire years slipped out of his grasp, with each that passed by largely the same as the last. He began to feel as though he were missing out on something—something unsubstantial that he couldn't quite pinpoint. He began to wonder if he had missed his true calling in life... that, indeed, he was wasting his entire life away. In unctual year 3891, he was told by his commanding officer that his batallion would be sent to the Elvenwood, a prospect he relished. It was a welcome change from the drudgery of day-to-day army life. For the first time in his life, he rode aboard the digger machine, a train-like vehicle generally used for excavating. He sat in the center of the great machine, surrounded by armored Dwarves who all looked alike, but with whom he was not personally acquainted. The machine traveled underground, bypassing the enchanted Elven forest and its magical traps that generally deterred invaders. They arrived near the heart of the Elven camp, only to find a platoon of Elf warriors had assembled (most likely to confront the Giant war machine that had been approaching their territory). Quendeadinfladnarstrapin disembarked to engage the Elves in melee combat, intending to dispatch as many of them as possible until what he anticipated to be his eventual death at their hands. He was prepared for this. He considered this to be an honorable way to meet his end, and did not fear the prospect of death. He relished the notion of being honored for his bravery and dedicated service in the afterlife. He lacked skill with a double-bladed axe, the standardized weapon for Dwarf troopers, so he had settled for arming himself with a speared pole arm, a weapon that lacked the destructive capability he desired but was lightweight enough to manipulate easily with his comparatively short arms and restricting armor plating. He swung the weapon wildly and with reckless abandon, not knowing what was yet to come. Exodus of the Giant After a ceasefire of sorts was arranged between his commanding officer, Gerrick of Gonderick, and the Elf leader Elladan, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin reluctantly lowered his arms and joined hands with an Elf warrior whose name was not known to him. The physical contact between the two magically provided some of his own life force to enhance the potency of the Elf's sorcery. While Quendeadinfladnarstrapin possessed no magical ability of his own, it seemed that the skin-to-skin contact was enough for him to contribute some of his very life force towards the shared magical spell. When the hundreds of Elves present on the battlefield combined their magic, along with the help of some butterfly people who were present during the battle, it proved sufficient to levitate the Giant into the air, and, eventually, completely outside the influence of the Earth's gravitational pull and into space. Quendeadinfladnarstrapin stood there on the battlefield, gazing up into the sky as the Giant grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared from view altogether. He did not possess a clear understanding of why this was necessary, though he later learned that the Earth and Moon were predicted to collide, and that the removal of the Giant from the world had altered the planet's mass sufficiently to affect its movement and thus prevent the collision. He secretly regretted the loss of so many metric tons of metal, which represented thousands of hours of mining labor. He knew such a fine endeavor would never be seen by his living eyes again. In the aftermath, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin helped load the wounded Elves on board the digger and transport them back to their Elvenwood home. He had once considered the Elves his mortal enemies, but to see their wounded bodies bloodied and battered in this manner, some of them tenuously clinging to life, he realized they were fellow creatures of the Earth, just as he was. During his time in the military, he'd learned to dehumanize the Elves, thinking of them merely as targets rather than living beings, but he was now reconsidering such ideals. He'd relished the rigors and structure of a military life, but in the end he felt even more disenfranchised than ever. Following this, he returned to Stonekeep aboard the digger to contemplate his next move. In the aftermath of what would prove to be his greatest adventure, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin briefly considered starting a grief counseling service for Dwarves who had lost loved ones, but he was unable to drum up sufficient interest in such a thing (Dwarves were notoriously closed-minded about their feelings, and the last thing most of them wanted to do was openly express them in front of others). He found much to his surprise that he qualified as a Dwarf war veteran, which entitled him to all sorts of donated foodstuffs and other commodities. He could have lived the rest of his life living off the generosity and good graces of others, but somehow he disliked that particular notion. As a self-made Dwarf, he wanted to remain productive, earning his own wages and resting upon his own laurels. In the end, he found himself another job as a guard to the Stonekeep entrance. He found that his role consisted of little more than standing at his post at the doors, waving and greeting fellow Dwarves as they passed. Many Dwarves casually dismissed him as an "door greeter," a term he patently despised; he was greeting people, not greeting the doors! Sometimes he would yell, "Not an exit! That's not an exit!" at them for using the wrong egress. He worked shorter hours, but still felt as if he were making a contribution to Dwarf society in some fashion. He was told not to allow Mirabel Miller return after some dealings that had gone sour, but he suspected that if he ever saw her, he'd probably let her through anyway. Trivia Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was a connoisseur of cheeses, but he was particularly fond of fromunda cheese. Behind the Scenes Quendeadinfladnarstrapin, like the other members of the Dwarf army mentioned in The Curse of the Fate Shifter, was originally created for a character card for a tabletop role-playing campaign. Originally intended as a generic character card to represent an army of 100 Dwarves, the author's sister provided names for each and every one of them. They were listed alphabetically, with each letter of the alphabet being used four times (except for "X," which was not used at all; as there are 26 letters of the alphabet, this would result in 104 Dwarves rather than the required 100). While two of these characters were eventually selected at random to accompany the player-character Gerrick on his role-playing adventures, Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was not among them (though statistically, he only had a two percent chance of being chosen randomly, so his lack of inclusion was in no way a reflection on his particular character). Quendeadinfladnarstrapin is mentioned only once in The Curse of the Fate Shifter, '' during the scene in which the first wave of Dwarves emerge from the digger machine to deal with the Elves assembled near the Elvenwood. Each of the Dwarves was called by name alphabetically as he disembarked from the machine, though it strains credibility that the Dwarf names would adhere precisely to the order in which their names appear alphabetically according to the English language. One can only assume that a) the Dwarf roll call was "really" read aloud in alphabetical order in accordance to the Dwarf language, and that the order of the names was rearranged for the story in order to conform to the reader's own expectations, or b) the names of the Dwarves themselves were changed for the story for the purposes of visual symmetry. The etymology of the character's name has been lost to time, though it is highly likely that it was generated using some of the same random root name fragments that were coined for the other Dwarf characters. The name is twenty-four letters and seven syllables long (it is pronounced with emphasis on the second, fourth, and sixth syllables, thusly: Quen-DEAD-in-FLAD-nar-STRAP-in), a radical departure from the more typical two- or, less commonly, three-syllable names devised for the other Dwarves. No visual depiction of Quendeadinfladnarstrapin was ever created, during the aforementioned role-playing campaign or during the character's unexpected ressurection and inclusion in the ''Butterfly Princess stories. Illustrations were created for Opudnars and Geezerplop, however, so it is possible to extrapolate to some extent what Quendeadinfladnarstrapin may have looked like. It is exceedingly unlikely that Quendeadinfladnarstrapin will make appearances in future books, due in part to the shift in focus away from the Dwarf characters in general, but also considering his extremely minor role in what, essentially, amounts to a single throwaway reference. Indeed, his entry in this very wiki, and its vast wealth of detail and character history, is inversely proportionate to his comparatively minor role in the overall story arc. The article was deliberately written to be one of the longest on the wiki. At the original time of its writing, it beat the Mariposa article at the time of this writing, but failing short of beating the article for Four, which would require the article to be twice its current length. Subsequent edits were required, as the article began to fall behind, being beaten in length even by Talla Unica and Syzygy. An effort will be maintained to at least keep this article hovering somewhere within the top five. Whether the preposterous excess of information is amusing or merely confusing remains to be seen, though if the opinion of the author (the primary and, so far, only contributor to this article) is any indication, it's probably more the latter than the former. Category:Persons Category:Dwarves Category:Dwarf Army Category:Excessively Long Names Category:Excessively Long Articles Category:Breech Births Category:Left-Handed Category:Maintenance Workers Category:Woodcarvers